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Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland English Renaissance theatre is English drama written between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642. A poet is a person who writes Poetry. Etymology From the Ancient greek: ποιέω, poieō: "I make or compose" Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. John Fletcher (1579 &ndash 1625 was a Jacobean Playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was Benjamin Jonson ( c 11 June 1572 &ndash 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance Dramatist He stands with Shakespeare as one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy. William Shakespeare ( baptised Comedy (from the Greek κωμωδίαkomodia has a popular meaning (any discourse generally intended to amuse especially in Television, Film, and Also a prolific writer of masques and pageants, he remains one of the most noteworthy and characteristic of Jacobean dramatists. The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in sixteenth and early seventeenth century Europe though it was developed earlier in Italy

Thomas Middleton, depicted in the frontispiece of Two New Plays, a 1657 edition of Women Beware Women and More Dissemblers Besides Women
Thomas Middleton, depicted in the frontispiece of Two New Plays, a 1657 edition of Women Beware Women and More Dissemblers Besides Women

Contents

Life

Middleton was born in London and baptized on April 18 1580. More Dissemblers Besides Women is a Jacobean stage play a tragicomedy written by Thomas Middleton, and first published in 1657. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Events 1025 - Bolesław Chrobry is crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland. He was the son of a bricklayer who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman and who, interestingly, owned property adjoining the Curtain theatre in Shoreditch. The Curtain Theatre was an Elizabethan Playhouse located in Curtain Close Shoreditch (part of the modern London Borough of Hackney Middleton was just five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a fifteen year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister: an experience which must surely have informed and perhaps even incited his repeated satirizing of the legal profession.

Though it has been claimed that Middleton attended Christ’s Hospital school, no scholarly evidence for this claim has been published. Christ's Hospital (popularly known as The Bluecoat School, and also by the nicknames "Housey" and "CH" is a full board coeducational Boarding school He did attend Queen’s College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, although he did not graduate. The Queen's College, founded 1341 is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Before he left Oxford (sometime in 1600 or 1601[1]), he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles; none appears to have been especially successful, and one, his book of satires, ran afoul of the Anglican Church's ban on verse satire and was burned. Nevertheless, his literary career was launched.

In the early 1600s, Middleton made a living writing topical pamphlets, including one—Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets—that enjoyed many reprintings as well as becoming the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry. At the same time, records in the diary of Philip Henslowe show that Middleton was writing for the Admiral's Men. The Admiral's Men (also called the Admiral's company, more strictly the Earl of Nottingham's Men; after 1603, Prince Henry's Men; after Unlike Shakespeare, Middleton remained a free agent, able to write for whichever company hired him. His early dramatic career was marked by controversy. His friendship with Thomas Dekker brought him into conflict with Ben Jonson and George Chapman in the War of the Theatres. Thomas Dekker is the name of Thomas Dekker (writer (1572&ndash1632 Elizabethan poet and dramatist Thomas Dekker (actor (born 1987 Benjamin Jonson ( c 11 June 1572 &ndash 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance Dramatist George Chapman (c 1559 &ndash May 12 1634) was an English Dramatist, Translator, and Poet. The War of the Theatres is the name commonly applied to a controversy from the later Elizabethan theatre; Thomas Dekker termed it the Poetomachia. The grudge with Jonson continued as late as 1626, when Jonson's play The Staple of News indulges a slur on Middleton's great success, A Game at Chess. [1] It has been argued that Middleton's Inner Temple Masque (1619) sneers at Jonson (then absent in Scotland) as a "silenced bricklayer. Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. "[2]

In 1603, Middleton married. The same year, an outbreak of plague forced the closing of the theaters in London, and James I assumed the English throne. Bubonic plague is the best-known manifestation of the bacterial disease plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis (formerly known as James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625 was King of Scotland as James VI, and King of England and King of Ireland as James These events marked the beginning of Middleton's greatest period as a playwright. Having passed the time during the plague composing prose pamphlets (including a continuation of Thomas Nashe's Pierce Penniless), he returned to drama with great energy, producing close to a score of plays for several companies and in several genres, most notably city comedy and revenge tragedy. City comedy, also called Citizen Comedy is a common genre of Elizabethan drama. The revenge play or revenge tragedy is a form of Tragedy which was extremely popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras The best-known of these He continued his collaborations with Dekker, and the two produced The Roaring Girl, a biography of contemporary thief Mary Frith. Mary Frith or Moll Cutpurse (c 1584 &ndash July 26, 1659) was a notorious Pickpocket and fence of the English

In the 1610s, Middleton began his fruitful collaboration with the actor William Rowley, producing Wit at Several Weapons and A Fair Quarrel; working alone he produced his comic masterpiece, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in 1613. William Rowley was an English Jacobean Dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers Wit at Several Weapons is a seventeenth-century Comedy of problematic date and authorship A Fair Quarrel is a Jacobean Tragicomedy, a collaboration between Thomas Middleton and William Rowley that was first published in His own plays from this decade reveal a somewhat mellowed temper; certainly there is no comedy among them with the satiric depth of Michaelmas Term and no tragedy as bloodthirsty as The Revenger's Tragedy. Middleton was also branching out into other dramatic endeavors; he was apparently called on to help revise Macbeth and Measure for Measure, and at the same time he was increasingly involved with civic pageants. Macbeth is among the best-known of William Shakespeare 's plays, and is his shortest tragedy, believed to have been written some time between Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604 This last connection was made official when, in 1620, he was appointed City Chronologer of the City of London. For London as a whole see the main article London. The City of London is a geographically He held this post until his death in 1627, at which time it was passed to Jonson. Jonson is a surname and may refer to Ben Jonson (circa 1572-1637 English Renaissance dramatist poet and actor Gail Jonson (born

Middleton's official duties did not interrupt his dramatic writings; the 1620s saw the production of his and Rowley's tragedy The Changeling, and several tragicomedies. The Changeling is a Jacobean Tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. In 1624, he reached a pinnacle of notoriety when his dramatic allegory A Game at Chess was staged by the King's Men. An allegory (from αλλος allos "other" and el αγορευειν agoreuein "to speak in public" is a figurative mode of representation A Game at Chess is a comic Satirical play by Thomas Middleton, first staged in August The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare (1564&ndash1616 belonged through most of his career The play used the conceit of a chess game to present and satirize the recent intrigues surrounding the Spanish Match. Aside from its common usage signifying "excessive pride" in literary terms a conceit is an Extended metaphor with a complex Logic that governs The Spanish Match describes the policy and diplomatic negotiations towards a proposed marriage between Prince Charles, the son of King James I of England Though Middleton's approach was strongly patriotic, the Privy Council shut down the play after nine performances on the complaint of the Spanish ambassador. A privy council is a body that advises the Head of state of a nation on how to exercise their executive authority, typically but not always in the context of a Middleton faced an unknown, but likely frightening, degree of punishment. Since no play later than A Game at Chess is recorded, it has been hypothesized that his punishment included a ban on writing for the stage.

Middleton died at his home in Newington Butts in 1627. Newington Butts is a short road in Southwark, London, England, leading south-west from the Elephant and Castle.

Works

Middleton wrote in many genres, including tragedy, history and city comedy. Traditionally the plays of William Shakespeare have been grouped into three categories tragedies, comedies, and histories. City comedy, also called Citizen Comedy is a common genre of Elizabethan drama. His best-known plays are the tragedies The Changeling (written with William Rowley) and Women Beware Women, and the cynically satirical city comedy A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. The Changeling is a Jacobean Tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. William Rowley was an English Jacobean Dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is a City comedy written c 1613 by English Renaissance Playwright Thomas Middleton. Although earlier editions of The Revenger's Tragedy attribute the play to Cyril Tourneur,[3] or refused to arbitrate between Middleton and Tourneur,[4] since the massive and widely acclaimed statistical studies by David Lake[5] and MacDonald P. This article is about the play For the film see Revengers Tragedy. Cyril Tourneur (1575 – February 28, 1626) was an English Dramatist who enjoyed his greatest success during the reign of King James I of Jackson,[6] Middleton's authorship has not been seriously contested, and no scholar has mounted a new defense of the discredited Tourneur attribution. [7] The Oxford Middleton and its companion piece, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture offer the most extensive and decisive evidence to date not only for Middleton's authorship of The Revenger's Tragedy, but also for his collaboration with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens and his adaptation and revision of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Measure for Measure. This article is about the play For the film see Revengers Tragedy. The Life of Timon of Athens is a play by William Shakespeare about the legendary Athenian misanthrope Timon (and probably influenced Macbeth is among the best-known of William Shakespeare 's plays, and is his shortest tragedy, believed to have been written some time between Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604

Middleton's work is diverse even by the standards of his age. He did not have the kind of official relationship with a particular company that Shakespeare or Fletcher had; instead, he appears to have written on a freelance basis for any number of companies. A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is a person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer Particularly in the early years of his career, this freedom led to a great diversity in his output, which ranges from the "snarling" satire of Michaelmas Term (performed by the Children of Paul's) to the bleak intrigues of The Revenger's Tragedy (performed by the King's Men), assuming he is the author of the latter. The Children of Paul's was the name of a troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Also contributing to the variety of the works is the scope of Middleton's career. If his early work was informed by the flourishing of satire in the late-Elizabethan period,[8]

His maturity was influenced by the ascendancy of Fletcherian tragicomedy. Tragicomedy is Fictional work that blend aspects of the Genres of Tragedy and Comedy. If many of these plays have been judged less compelling than his earlier work, his later work, in which satiric fury is tempered and broadened, also includes three of his acknowledged masterpieces. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, produced by the Lady Elizabeth's Men, skillfully combines Middleton's typically cutting presentation of London life with an expansive view of the power of love to effect reconciliation. The Lady Elizabeth's Men, or Princess Elizabeth's Men, was a company of actors in Jacobean London, formed under the patronage of King James The Changeling, a late tragedy, returns Middleton to an Italianate setting like that in The Revenger's Tragedy; here, however, the central characters are more fully drawn and more compelling as individuals, again, assuming he wrote The Revenger's Tragedy. This article is about the play For the film see Revengers Tragedy. [9] Similar changes may be seen in Women Beware Women. [10]

Middleton's plays are characterized by their cynicism about the human race, a cynicism that is often very funny. Cynicism (Kυνισμός originally comprised the various philosophies of a group of ancient Greeks called the Cynics, founded by True heroes are a rarity in Middleton; in his plays, almost every character is selfish, greedy, and self-absorbed. This quality is best observed in the A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, a panoramic view of a London populated entirely by sinners, in which no social rank goes unsatirized. It can also be seen in the tragedies Women Beware Women and The Revenger's Tragedy, in which enjoyably amoral Italian courtiers endlessly plot against each other, resulting in a climactic bloodbath. When Middleton does portray good people, the characters have very small roles, and are flawless to perfection. Thanks to a theological pamphlet attributed to him, Middleton is thought by some to have been a strong believer in Calvinism, among the dominant strains in the theology of the English church of his time, which rigidly divides humanity into the damned and the elect, which focuses on human sinfulness and inadequacy more than in the other denominations of Christianity. Calvinism (sometimes called the Reformed tradition, the Reformed faith, or Reformed theology) is a theological system and an approach to the Theology is the study of a god or the gods from a religious perspective Original sin is according to a doctrine in Catholic theology, humanity's state of Sin resulting from the Fall of Man. Total depravity (also called total inability and total corruption) is a theological Doctrine that derives from the Augustinian concepts List of Christian denominations (or Denominations self-identified as Christian) ordered by historical and doctrinal relationships

Reputation

Middleton's work has long been praised by literary critics, among them Algernon Charles Swinburne and T. S. Eliot. Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909 was a Victorian era English poet Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965 was a poet Dramatist, and Literary critic. The latter thought Middleton was second only to Shakespeare. In his own time, he was thought talented enough to revise Shakespeare's Macbeth and Measure for Measure. Macbeth is among the best-known of William Shakespeare 's plays, and is his shortest tragedy, believed to have been written some time between Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604

Middleton's plays have been staged throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, each decade offering more productions than the last. Even less familiar works have been staged: A Fair Quarrel was performed at the National Theatre, and The Old Law has been performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. A Fair Quarrel is a Jacobean Tragicomedy, a collaboration between Thomas Middleton and William Rowley that was first published in The Old Law or A New Way to Please You is a seventeenth-century Tragicomedy written by Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, and Philip Massinger The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC is a British Theatre company The Changeling has been adapted for film several times, and the tragedy Women Beware Women remains a stage favorite. The Revenger's Tragedy was adapted into Alex Cox's film Revengers Tragedy, the opening credits of which attribute the play's authorship to Middleton. Alexander Cox (born December 15, 1954) is a British Film director and sometime Actor, notable for his idiosyncratic style and approach Revengers Tragedy is a film adaptation of the 1606 play The Revenger's Tragedy (attributed to Thomas Middleton in the credits following

Middleton's Canon

Note: The Middleton canon is beset by complications involving collaboration and debated authorship. The most recent and authoritative Middleton canon has been established by the editors of the Oxford Middleton (2007). All dates of plays are dates of composition, not of publication.

Plays

Masques and entertainments

Poetry

Prose

Notes

  1. ^ Mark Eccles, "Thomas Middleton a Poett', "Studies in Philology" 54 (1957): 516-36 (p. 525)
  2. ^ Jerzey Limon, "A Silenc'st Bricklayer," Notes and Queries 41 (1994), p. 512.
  3. ^ Three Jacobean Tragedies (Penguin, 1968) and the Revels edition (Manchester UP, 1975) attribute the play to Tourneur on the cover, although the Revels editor makes a case for Middleton inside.
  4. ^ The New Mermaids and Revels Student Edition leave open the question of authorship.
  5. ^ The Canon of Middleton's Plays (Cambridge University Press, 1975).
  6. ^ Middleton and Shakespeare: Studies in Attribution (1979).
  7. ^ The play is attributed to Middleton in Jackson's facsimile edition of the 1607 quarto (1983), in Neil Loughrey and Michael Taylor's edition of Five Middleton Plays (Penguin, 1988), and in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (Oxford, 2007). A summary of the great variety of evidence for Middleton's authorship is contained in the relevant sections of Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, general editors Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford, 2007).
  8. ^ Dorothy M. Farr, Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism, New York, Harper and Row, 1973; pp. 9-37.
  9. ^ Farr, pp. 50-71.
  10. ^ Farr, pp. 72-97.

References

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